By Francis OWUSU-ACHAMPONG
Arrest warrant for Morality!
A few national issues over the past month have forced me into a highly reflective mood… so much so that I feel like leaving my family and getting myself ensconced in far- away Atwea Mountains where I could pretend to be a monk for some weeks.
If I were a clergyman, I would engage in dry fasting for forty days non-stop to redeem this country from the shackles of unethical technocrats, politicians and other workers. I would prefer to distance myself from only prophesying imminent calamities involving rich and powerful musicians, politicians and famous individuals.
I cannot fathom why God makes revelations about these wealthy groups of people and not financially less endowed pensioners like me.
My biggest wish now is for the issue of an arrest warrant for Morality who appears to have left the Ghanaian social fabric unceremoniously. I admit the biggest challenge in getting this wish crystallised is which state institution I can appeal to, to issue this warrant for the return of Morality to the country from wherever he has chosen to emigrate to. This country is bleeding profusely from the absence of Morality and his cousin Ethics.
I least expected that in a country that boasts of some of the best legal brains across the Commonwealth, we are unable to decide which state institution should handle the case of the million dollars cash stashed in the home of a former public official without a credible source of supply.
One day, it is the Special Prosecutors’ office that has the mandate. The next time it EOCO. The Attorney General advises EOCO to wash their hands off the case, leaving unlearned men and women like us wondering what the name of this charade should be…. Kumawood Part What?
Even more bizarre is the apparent difficulty of legal luminaries in defining which charge(s) should be proffered against the former state official to unravel the source of the funds. But paradoxically, it has been so easy to list charges before the courts of persons alleged to have siphoned part of the same money!
Where is legendary George Orwell to write additional sequels to “Animal Farm” and “1984”? The emerging plot can make interesting reading in Ghana regarding equity in the administration of justice.
While mulling over this, I heard of a yet to be verified information to the effect that the Masloc lady who was charged and sentenced on 78 counts including causing financial loss to the state of about Ghs. 90 million by a competent court, may obtain presidential pardon, come January 2025!.
The first thought that ran through my mind was how many kilometres of rural roads, including the Odoben- Brakwa, Amanfopong- Fosuansa roads could repaired across the country with that sum of money.
Then, I grew extremely bitter about the whopping Ghs.6000 withholding tax levied on a small consultancy assignment I undertook last year. Now I have stopped wondering why so many potential tax- payers dodge tax liabilities in this country.
It also came to me as not surprising why the convergence between fiscal and monetary policies have remained illusory for a greater part of our public financial management history, with interest and exchange rates stubbornly defying remediation.
I was jolted to recall how some five decades ago, working as a messenger in the ministries, our bosses were always in a frenzy to obtain series of spurious invoices to cover the purchase of various items, some necessary, others so irrelevant each time the fiscal year was about to close on certain budget lines.
I can only conjecture that these nefarious practices are still prevalent and translate in the mess captured by the annual Auditor General’s reports, much of which infractions never get resolved, and perpetrators easily get away with impunity.
Then came the mother of all shocks which nearly made me miss a heartbeat. During various corporate governance training sessions, arguments arise about why it is necessary to incentivize corporate executives well.
The refrain has usually tilted towards the idea that if such executives are paid well, they will refrain from corruptible and other unethical tendencies and concentrate on running their firms effectively and efficiently. But evidence to the contrary manifest too often when the same highly paid officials still engage in corrupt practices, possibly due to ineffective board of directors to rein in such malpractices.
The Akans have a saying which loosely translates as “the exact length of the frog will only be known when the frog dies”. So it came to pass that a public sector CEO is dismissed without the government giving reasons. But trust the rumuor mill not to miss the circumstances of the hurried job termination in this information age.
The allegations, if true, are beyond bizarre. In the absence of the enforcement of ethical behaviour at the top, the cascading effect rolls down quickly and officials at every strata of management begin to rationalize their own fraudulent behaviour, reflecting “ the fish rots from the top “ syndrome.
The striking thing about this dismissal is that not too long ago, the same institution was embroiled in a series of corruption scandals that immediately paved way for a new CEO.
If the allegations going round are anything to go by then, all hands must be on deck to find where Morality has absconded to. Ghana needs him back expeditiously and at any cost to salvage the dwindling fortunes of this otherwise blessed nation that is being humiliated/blackmailed by the Bretton Woods institutions and other creditors.
Kill intellectual dishonesty/mischief.
I found the attempts to confuse cocoa farmers with the sudden surge in prices most unfortunate by people who should know better. Cocoa, like many bulk agricultural commodities, is susceptible to price changes for a variety of reasons, among which is the attempt to use other substitutes or additives in the manufacture of chocolate and now the vagaries of the weather from climatic shifts.
When the price of cocoa hit between $ 10,000 and $12,000 per tonne and some politicians and commentators spent precious time confusing cocoa farmers out of ignorance or mischief, about government insensitivity regarding prevailing local prices, I felt sad about the inherent intellectual dishonesty. Why pick just a segment of a Venn diagram to explain the whole?
Which trade finance practitioner is unaware of the forward market mechanism against which Cocobod borrows and sells cocoa on the international market? Such price spikes are not static to warrant knee jerk responses. Yet we had all kinds of ignorant commentaries, just to score cheap political points in a cocoa sector largely made up of illiterates.
Where are the same loquacious, disingenuous politicians and commentators now that the international FOB price has dropped significantly to about $8000? We need them to explain to the rural farmers the challenge the government may go through if the price drops further below the $7000 per tonne which, I am told, the renegotiated forward market price was last struck.
Would they be bold and sincere to spend the same resources to go round the rural areas to explain the difficulties the government may face with further price drop below the $ 7000 strike price? Let us collectively cultivate a sense of truth and responsibility if, indeed we call ourselves educated men and women.
Propaganda does not always win, and even if it does, it is only temporal and excessively costly. As in the case of galamsey and the previous elections, where propaganda shifted voting patterns, everybody suffers eventually.
The writer is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers, a former adjunct Lecturer at the National Banking College, a farmer and the author of “Risk Management in Banking” textbook. Email; [email protected] Tel. 0244 324181
